Generally, a door is provided to all kinds of electronic products such as refrigerators, washing machines and the like, and thus, the door is rotated around a hinge shaft to open and close the interior of the electronic product.
On the other hand, the door of the electronic product has a separate locking apparatus for preventing the door from being arbitrarily open while the electronic product is being operated.
One example of such conventional door locking apparatuses has been disclosed in Korean Patent Application Laid-Open No. 10-2005-0066293 (entitled ‘door safety apparatus for washing machine), wherein the door safety apparatus includes a washing machine door, a pressing protrusion formed on the inner periphery of the door in such a manner as to be detachable from the door, and a sensing switch adapted to be pressed by means of the pressing protrusion, if the door is closed, to sense the closing of the door, so that if the sensing switch is pressed by means of the pressing protrusion, the pressing protrusion is brought into contact with the contact point provided in the interior of the sensing switch, thereby sensing the closing of the door.
According to the above-mentioned prior art, even though the door is closed in the situation where a child or animal is locked in the washing machine, the washing machine is not operated to previously prevent safety accidents like asphyxial deaths from happening.
Since the above-mentioned prior art senses the door closing in an electrical way, however, malfunctions of the electrical product frequently occur to cause the reliability of the product to be deteriorated.